Three poems by Jenny MacDonald

Child on a Swing  

Swinging high
I love you mum he shouted
smiling
blue scarf flowing

I love you mum he shouted
free as a bird
blue scarf flowing
legs kicking high

free as a bird
soaring towards heaven
legs kicking high
dancing in air

soaring towards heaven
dreaming
dancing in air
with angel wings

dreaming
blissful
flying towards clouds
with angel wings

carefree
smiling
ecstatic
swinging high
 

El Fishawy’s Cafe (a cafe in Cairo)

antique mirrors gild aged walls
imbued with decades of discussion
arabesque lanterns light veiled alcoves
where young lovers
vow to love, honour and adore                                                                                                            

mint tea and cardamom coffee
spice dusty, desert air
apple scented tobacco wafts from intricate shisha pipes
as philosophers look out on labyrinths of cobblestone alleys
that echo the ghosts of centuries  
                                                                                                                                                
a woman aged but ageless –
mother of time                                                                                           
wears a garland of gardenias
her winkled, woven face
embroiders hidden worlds

nearby a mosque stands silent
silhouetted against a Cairo sky
 

Esna (a town in upper Egypt)

Smoke from age-old fires
snakes an ancient sky that once watched Khnum – creator
God,
breathe life into men and women
moulded from clay

Children with tattered clothes and matted hair
play on the banks of
a sequined shimmering ribbon
flowing through ancient land

A bus load of tourists
crass, cameras in hand
tramp through billowing reeds,
trespassing the sacred
    
A mosque’s slender tower rises
above mud brick huts
as a Moazzen’s hypnotic chant
echoes through time